Hearst Corp. brings a ray of hope to the newspaper industry

As we witness the decline of the newspaper industry, I strongly question the commonly held belief that the reading public has proven conclusively that they won't pay for online newspapers. I think that they have shown that they don't want to read their newspapers on their computer. But computers aren't the only game in town these days, and I'm hopeful that Hearst Corp.'s plans to launch its own wireless e-reader device to bring newspapers and periodicals to the new format will show the way out of the wilderness.

I believe that the public will pay for an electronic newspaper if it is as convenient as a print one, meaning that the type must be crisp, the reading device must be easy to use and hold, and the price of the reader and the subscription must be reasonable. While I'm sure you immediately thought of Amazon's Kindle, that is only one of an oncoming flood of new generation e-readers that have already or soon will hit the market, including: